After the floods came, it was only a matter of time before the hamlet vanished. People along the villages that squeezed the Naugatuck River had known as early as the late 19th century that somebody needed to dam the ominous river.

Without a dam to choke the river's ferocity, a flood of biblical proportions could annihilate hundreds of souls downstream in Thomaston and Waterbury.

So when the floods came that August of 1955, killing 100, leveling bridges, razing businesses and sending cattle, cars and houses hurtling like leaves toward Long Island Sound, the farmers of Fluteville and Campville saw the writing on the wall. The place they had called home, a hamlet of strawberry patches, a one-room schoolhouse and chickens to kill for Sunday dinner, would be erased in the name of progress.

The Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center current exhibit tells the story of Fluteville and Campville, destroyed in 1955 to make room for a flood control dam.

It is a story about a way of life in which it was still possible to live as your forebears did 100 years before. Largely through the efforts of Romily Cochrane Cofrancesco, author of "Campville Chronicles: An Oral History of the People of Harwinton," the story is retold with anecdotes and photographs from those who lived there.

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